what question would you ask leon panetta today and martin dempsey if you had a chance to? >> i don't think there's a big conspiracy. we didn't do what we could have. the military did not do something, they didn't fire whatever. my question would be why was there no plan? it's like if you close down your fire department and somebody calls and says my house is on fire. it would take awhile to get everybody back in there and get the fire trucks moving. on the other hand, if you had the fire department standing by, which is what we should have -- standing by -- we could have reacted. >>brian: when this book is written, you take your real life and connections and put them into novel concepts so they come out looking like real stories, one of which was syria. you put a call in to your friends and said what is going on there, i'm going to go research this. what happened? >> i try to be as current as i can. i want current events to be as realistic as i can be. current events are current, and i have a buddy of mine who is much smarter than i am on this type of stuff. i was heading